Is America Ready for Japanese-Style 7-Elevens?
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Convenience StoresRetailCultural Differences
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Convenience Stores
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Cultural Differences
Discussion about 7-Eleven's potential expansion to Japanese-style convenience stores in America, with comments pondering cultural and logistical challenges.
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Sep 9, 2025 at 12:58 PM EDT
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> Challenges include the difficulty of transporting fresh food to locations in the United States far from city centers. In Japan, the average convenience store receives multiple fresh-food deliveries per day. [...] In the United States, Mr. Dacus said, fresh food often means hot food that can be frozen and cooked on site, eliminating the need for multiple daily deliveries.
Japan is a much more urbanized country, with more foot traffic to support impulse stops to buy a snack. Even outside of pedestrianized areas, it's a shorter trip to get supplies from a central regional location to individual stores.
My local high-quality American convenience store chain is QuikTrip. If you go to their Wikipedia page and check the map of their stores, you'll see they have stores in Arizona and stores in the Carolinas, but they have no truly rural locations. It's all islands surrounding major metro areas. This suggests that the transport time from some central distributor is a major factor in where they put stores.